


(un)heimlich

by ninamalfoy



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Abandoned WIP, F/M, unbetaed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-13
Updated: 2010-01-13
Packaged: 2017-10-06 05:54:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/50397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninamalfoy/pseuds/ninamalfoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He was okay for a husband. A bit mysterious, maybe, what with that funny scar and the fact that she didn't know anything at all about his past, but then, she wasn't someone who expected much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(un)heimlich

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this six years ago and still like it - it was supposed to be a WIP, but, well, life happened. *wry grin*

She has been married to him for five years. This is a long time to not really get to know him, she thinks. He was on the search for someone who was not curious. And she wasn't. She was hurt enough to just have a need for warmth and superficial companionship and the occasional sex and didn't ask for more in a husband. She suspects that he has also been hurt enough in his past.

Their marriage is one of a thousand, just as unnoticeable, just as bland, just as average. They do not have children – they agreed on it, on a baser level when they were still dating, without needing many words. They could only deal with that much responsibility that life as adults brought with it. They wouldn't have been able to show real feelings to their children; they would have been just as superficial as they are with each other; and this simply wouldn't do for children.

She remembers her mother – white trailer trash, always on the lookout for the next cheap bottle of wino and an easy grope behind the sheds that surrounded their run-down trailer park. Her father – she doesn't know who he was, one of the many nameless faces that appeared and disappeared when she still was a little runt, subject to her mother's desires. Perhaps.

She doesn't know anything about his past, who his parents were, what he did – nothing. She just never asked – and she supposed he was grateful for that. He appeared one day in their city, a nameless drab city smack in the middle of the giant nowhere that was Idaho, a black-haired, green-eyed stranger with the name of Harry Potter.

He just attracted that enough attention that everyone knew that he was on the lookout for a job, anything would do. He got hired at the corn factory shortly afterwards, became one of the many nameless workers there. Canning the corn. Showing enough ability to become overseer. Could have stepped higher up in the factory, but he denied; said that he was satisfied. The factory boss looked at him strangely, but gave in and kept him at his post. He was a good worker; never called in sick; only took the just amount of leave and never spoke up. Except that time.

He became one of the many nameless faces at the bar where she worked as a server after working hours. He'd order a beer and whatever was the house's day dish to go along with it; hamburger with french fries it mostly was. He lived nearby in a little dingy flat in one of these ten-storey flat houses, where the run-down lived, where it smelt like piss and cat's litter in the scruffy hallways where the plaster crumbled from the walls, where dirt had been treaded into the faded carpet so much that the original pattern could only be made out at the edges.

One evening, he talked to her. She doesn't even remember what it was; superficial stuff. As always. And then they talked some more, and more, and then it got to the point that people who seemed to be always in a stupor, either from boredom or alcohol or something different, began to talk. So she knew that it had to be something… serious, and before half a year passed after the first talk he asked her to get engaged at his flat. They had had sex, and she was smoking one of his crumpled Luckies, trying to make smoke circles, and he was lying on his back next to her, seemingly asleep. And then, just out of the blue: 'Do you want to marry me?' Looking after the perfect smoke circle drift up to the ceiling and dissolve into nothing, she nodded. Said a quiet 'yes,' in case he needed more affirmation. So it was settled.

He turned up the next day at her place – she lived above the bar in a room, shared the kitchen and bathroom with the other server, the owner's daughter – with a plain ring and a red rose, already a bit brownish around the edges. The wedding – three months afterwards – was a plain affair. Dressed in a blouse and skirt she had borrowed off the owner's daughter, him in a ill-fitting suit he had to return the next day, they were announced husband and wife.

She moved into his flat, he emptied out half his wardrobe to make place for her stuff and she took up cooking for both of them – she had done it all the time at the bar -, they now lived like any ordinary couple. They didn't have friends – merely acquaintances, merely people that shared the same air as they did, like the owner's daughter whom she chatted with sometimes, some of his co-workers to whose parties they got invited, but that was about all. They managed to do with what they earned. Saving up money for a fridge, because the old one leaked and repairing it would have been more expensive than buying a new one.

And so it went.

For five years, they lived together in a companionable silence – if it was awkward, they strived to not notice it and just waited until it went away, which it did, eventually. She asked him about his work and vice versa, they listened quietly to what the other had to say, which wasn't very much in any case, nodded at the right places, smiled when it was needed, and just existed – justified and approved by society.

*

Until this day. She never has been curious, never pried into what he was, who he was and where he came from. His accent carries some British tinges; whenever people enquire, he just shrugs it off with a faint smile and pleasant nothings. He claims to not wanting to talk about his past, but he pulls it off with enough niceties that people more curious than her are mollified by it and don't pry anymore.

What he owns is bland; nothing marks him as an individual. Just the latest cheap thriller as reading material, the others either thrown away or stacked up under his bedside, his clothes from the nearest Wal-Mart, his tastes in food run to the every-day stuff, nothing fancy.

There is nothing special about Harry Potter; she thinks, except for that peculiar scar. Shaped like a lightning-bolt, almost covering the entire right side of his forehead. He always combs his fringe over it, but that doesn't prevent him from warding off questions with a curt 'Car crash,' and people know that they won't get anything more than this. There are some half-hearted theories floating around the place as to how he got it; but he's known as a quiet, tight-lipped boring fellow. Not exactly the screamer at any given party.

When he comes from work, wearing his oldest, rattiest jeans and a washed-out t-shirt with the company's logo on it, trudging up the stairs, she has just put the hamburger meat into the pan, the ingredients already laid out on the table for him to assemble his hamburger for himself, as this is the way he likes it best.

'Hello.' Simple greeting, short peck on the cheek, a smile that doesn't reach their eyes. Like always. She hangs up her apron, as she has already eaten at the bar and pours herself root beer. 'Long day?', he asks, setting himself at the table. The smell of raw, canned corn wafts up to her; she's almost too used to the smell to detect it. It is everywhere in their flat, in his clothes, in their bed linens, in their loo. But it is strongest on him. She shrugs, nods. 'As always, you know.' Nodding, he absently compiles his burger, lifting a meat lump out of the pan onto his plate – with his long arms, he doesn't even have to get up to do this.

She doesn't know what made her ask it; she thinks it has to do with the itchy feeling she has felt the last some days, an itch that rested at the small of her back first, not really itching yet, but making its unpleasant location known, and then it slinks up her spine during the day, extending tendrils that exude a faint niggling throughout her body, until it stops just under her skull, at the back of her neck, and nudges her, making her think all the day about things that were, things that are and things that would be. 'Who are you?'

A strange question to ask after you've been married for over five years; five times 365 and plus a day for the switch year makes 1826 days. In all these days and even before that, when they were dating and then engaged, she never meant to ask it. It has slipped out of her mouth, like an alien intruder, something foreign in what made up 'them'.

He looks up at her, munching on the last bite of his hamburger. His eyes hold some faint reproach; how dare she ask such a thing, when she knows that he would not like it. But at the same time, there is something akin relief to be seen there. She circles her index finger around the tip of the glass, feeling the sticky wetness of the beer spread around and making a little squeaking noise. She raises her eyebrow, just that bit, a small inch, half an inch. Anything to make him tell, anything to erase the question that hangs between them.

'I'm Harry Potter; you know that,' he finally says, bending to get the salad bowl that is farthest from him on the table. She stays silent, she won't let him slip off the hook that easily by retorting with some silly, nonsensical thing. She wants to know whom she has shared her bed with these years. Her heart is still something that she never has given freely; it still belongs to her, as cobwebbed and faint-beating it is.

'You want to know?' He dares her, he challenges her to take up the glove that lies between them, the glove he has hit her with. There is something in his voice that says 'you don't know what you're dealing with here really', and somehow, despite the question being asked in a soft, quiet tone, it manages to sound chilling. She swallows without having raised the half-empty glass of root beer to her lips, licks her lips. 'No, not really.' Backing off from the mystery that is her husband, backing off from disrupting the shallow safety of their marriage. 'Good.' His head is bent over his plate, scraping together the last remains of the salad. She exhales slowly. She never has thought of him as dangerous before, but now there is this air around him, an air that speaks of horrors, of fears and things that live in the dark and don't come out in the light. She is afraid of him now; as if she has somehow gotten involved in something bigger than she is, something she can't even try to understand because it would make her scream and scream until her voice is hoarse. She does not want to know. Not ever.


End file.
